are mere vamped-up shallowness, drawn from a city man's mind in a city
room by gaslight. You must consider that the countryman who lives out of
doors, and always with nature, is, as regards his reading, very much in
the same mental position as the people who lived four hundred years
ago--in the days when costly and rare manuscripts, few and far between,
chained to the desk, were just being superseded by printed books at a
fifth the price, which could be actually bought and carried home. Till
quite lately so few books have circulated in country places that they may
be said to have been like these old manuscripts. The early printed books
were simply the manuscripts printed, and that is why they remain to this
day the finest specimens of typography, quite incomparable and not to be
approached by present-day printers. The art of the scribe, elaborated
through centuries, had reached a marvellous perfection; the first printer
copied them--the magic Fust actually sold his first books as manuscripts.
Since printers have only copied printers, books have steadily declined in
excellence. I have been obliged to use the outside to suggest the
inside--country readers want that which is genuine, honest, and, in a
word, really good; you cannot please them with vamped-up book-making. Two
books occur to me at this moment which would be greatly appreciated in
every country home, from that of the peasant who has just begun to read
to the houses of well-educated and well-to-do people, if they only knew
of their existence and their contents--of course provided they were cheap
enough, for country people have to be careful of their money nowadays. I
allude to Darwin's 'Climbing Plants' and to his 'Earthworms;' these are
astonishing works of singular patience and careful observation. The first
gives most fascinating facts about such a common plant, for example, as
the hedge bryony and the circular motion of its tendrils. Any farmer, for
instance, will tell you that the hop-bine will insist upon going round
the pole in one direction, and you cannot persuade it to go the other.
These circular movements seem almost to resemble those of the planets